Jon takes another leap into the future to witness the eventual fate of a star like ours.

With great trepidation I must visit the system of Kepler 56. This star, some 2,800 lightyears away and around four times the size of our Sun, has become what’s known as a ‘G0V’. It has crossed that critical, irreversible borderline on its transition to the status of a red giant.

Jon travels to a planet where the mountains are capped not with snow, but diamonds.

The astonishing alien splendour of the Upsilon Andromedae system enthralled the senses – it seems fitting that the first multi-planetary system around a main sequence star discovered by humans should be such a spectacular one.

Drifting through the Galaxy like a dirty faced Dickensian orphan trudging up a foggy, cobbled road, the wandering rogue world I encountered on my last voyage – Obsidiana – evoked an odd feeling of pity.

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